Existing eyewear suffers from problems relating to construction and reliability. The costs of the lens, design and materials can be compromised by limiting factors of the eyeglasses, including hinges for closure of a temple arm.
Structurally, eyeglasses are susceptible to failure at various locations, including the nose bridge, as well as the hinge components. These failure points also lead to complications relating to manufacturing, as well as assembly. For example, eyeglasses must conform to safety and production constraints. Not only must eyeglasses be designed for structural integrity for long term use and reliability, the glasses must be designed to allow manufacturing and subsequent repair.
Existing technology in the eyeglasses arts relate to improved structural support on the nose bridge, such as noted in U.S. Pat. No. 6,352,342. Other improvements in the eyeglasses art relate to the pairing of eyeglasses with extra components, such as secondary lenses, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,089,708 or U.S. Pat. No. 6,331,057. Other examples of secondary eyeglass components include a visor described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,025. But there are failures in the current eyeglass technology to address the structural failure point of the hinge between the lenses frame and the temple arms.
Attempts have been made to utilize magnets with eyeglasses, such as described in Publication No. 2007/0132942, which describes a two magnet break-away system disposed on the arm of the eyeglasses. The technique of Publication No. 2007/0132942 is directed more for preventing the breaking of the arm and fails to include any rigidity for product safety, as well as means for encapsulating the magnets to hold them in place. Rather, the magnetic system of Publication No. 2007/0132942 provides for the disengagement of the arm when the magnets become unaligned without damage to the arm itself.
The limitations to existing eyeglasses at the frame/arm hinge make existing eyeglasses susceptible to premature breaking. Additionally, these existing hinges having tiny screws are difficult to manufacture, difficult to repair and can have issues satisfying consumer protection constraints relating to the sale and manufacture of these commercial products. Thus, there are extensive construction and material concerns to the structural integrity of existing eyeglasses because of the foregoing limitations of current screw technology.
As such, there exists a need for the design and manufacture of eyeglasses having an improved hinge between the frame and the arm, structural as well as manufacturing improvements.